


our frail mystic ships

by aiviloti



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: AtsuHina, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Oblivious, Osamu is a good brother, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24898126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiviloti/pseuds/aiviloti
Summary: Miya Atsumu on the concept of time, and eventually Hinata Shouyou.Alternatively, how two hours is not a long time, but it is enough.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu, Miya Atsumu & Miya Osamu
Comments: 25
Kudos: 103
Collections: MSBY Exchange





	our frail mystic ships

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CharWright5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharWright5/gifts).



One year is not a long time.

It is all Atsumu gets to track down the news of the Miyagi Prefecture’s list of winners, to hope for the name “Karasuno High” to appear within his sight, to dream of that freakish quick and the blinding smile that accompanies it.

It is all Atsumu gets to dream about one Hinata Shouyou with hope fluttering in his chest, but perhaps it is also hope that makes reality particularly harsh. _The boy you love, he’s here_ , it tells you. _H_ _e’s here, but you can’t reach him._

But one year is not a long time.

It passes in the blink of an eye, torching all of Atsumu’s hopes and dreams into ash, leaving him with only a faint wisp of a promise that he wasn’t sure meant anything to anyone but himself.

_Shouyou-kun, I’ll set for you one day._

* * *

Two years is a long time.

Yet it is still not enough for Miya Atsumu to forget the glimpse of a dazzling smile he saw a very long time ago. (Perhaps it wasn't even that long ago, third year. Atsumu does not want to admit to his dramatic tendencies. Drama king who? Miya Atsumu? Absolutely not.)

He tries to not keep up with the high school volleyball tournament results. He's a professional now, having joined the Black Jackals. What's there for him to hold on to? Nothing. He does not care what Hinata is doing in school, out of school. (Except a pair of amber eyes, a smile, a feral determination- _Stop._ )

* * *

Two years is a long time.

Two years is how long it is that Atsumu does not need to hope, because Hinata Shouyou is nowhere to be found. 

How far away from Japan is Brazil anyway? Atsumu does not know. He does not want to care, for even Miyagi is too far away for Atsumu’s liking. Brazil? He does not want to even think about it, he _can’t_.

(Oh, but he does, it’s 18529 kilometres away.) 

How many hours of difference are there between them? Atsumu does not know. It’s not like Atsumu texts or stays in contact with him anyway, it doesn’t make a difference even if he checks.

(12 hours exactly. Atsumu and Hinata are separated by the entire earth, apparently.)

How many hours away is Atsumu away from Hinata? Atsumu does not know. Not like he would fly all the way across the globe for a guy who probably sees him as nothing but a formidable opponent anyway.

(It’s a 26 hour and 30 minutes flight. He tells himself he can afford it, he’s in the fucking V League. He also tells himself the last thing he ever said to Hinata was “I’ll set for you one day”. And that was too many years ago. What would he even say if he showed up at Rio, anyway? I have loved you for too many years, too long? Please do something about it?)

Two years is a long time to be hopeful, to be waiting for a person who might at most remember you as one half of an amazing pair of twins who were good at volleyball in high school.

Right. High school. Who holds on to shit from so long ago, anyway?

Miya Atsumu, apparently.

* * *

Two years is a long time. Osamu has always known Atsumu was crap at his feelings and expressing them, but he hadn’t realised that he would be _this_ hopeless when it comes to Hinata Shouyou.

Perhaps it’s blindly believing this is nothing more than a stupid phase, nothing more than his stupid brother finding joy in seeking validation and enjoying the pursuit of something he does not have. But Osamu has taken his place next to Atsumu for 25 years. It is easier to pretend he doesn’t, but he knows how to tell between petty tantrums and a genuine adoration.

Picture this, one very drunk and delirious Miya Atsumu draped on Osamu’s restaurant counter at 11:37pm on a Friday night.

Then picture this, one very tired Miya Osamu.

“Are you drunk, asshole?”

Atsumu gives him a dreamy sigh, then giggles. Osamu thinks he has his answer. 

“I think I like him, you know, Samu?” Atsumu says. His arms flail excitedly as he speaks.

“I know,” Osamu snorts. “You found out seven years ago and you haven’t shut up about it since.” He fiddles with his phone idly.

Had it been any other day, he wouldn’t have been as tolerant. But perhaps, it has been a long day at Miya Onigiri. If Atsumu is going to be his best source of comedic relief, he will take what he can get.

 _Ooh_ , an idea comes to mind. _Blackmail material._ He holds out his phone and taps into the camera app. “You were saying? Tsumu?”

“Shouyou,” comes the dreamy reply. “He’s all the things good in this world, the suns and stars, minced tuna and spring onions onigiri.”

“Did you just compare the love of your life to a rice ball, asshole.”

“Mmmm, Shouyou? The love of my life? I agree. The light of the Jackals, the light of my life, apple of my eye, eye of my apple,” He giggles. Osamu briefly considers ending this conversation, but he thinks about the joy involved when he shows it to Atsumu in the morning, accompanied by a massive hangover, and he decides it is worth the cringe.

 _Oh? Show it to Tsumu?_ An idea sets into place.

* * *

Two hours is not a long time. It is how long Atsumu sits in Osamu’s shop and pine for one Hinata Shouyou (not that he doesn’t already do that all the time anyway, it’s simply less vocal), but it is enough for Osamu to capture enough to ruin Atsumu’s life.

The first red flag comes when Osamu sends a text at the crack of dawn, accompanied by the skull-cracking headache he suffers from. 

**Osamu:** Wanna see what you’ve been up to all night :DDD

Atsumu’s eyes narrow. Osamu does not use emoji for genuine purposes. There are signs he has learned to identify over the years, one of them is this — here is a concentrated dosage of sarcasm and mockery fitted into four characters. He should feel fear, but his headache refuses to let him feel anything but pain.

 **Atsumu:** fuck did you do  
**Osamu:** oh no no, you’ve got it wrong. It’s fuck did _you_ do  
**Atsumu:** who do i have to kill, is it you  
**Osamu:** if youre asking who i sent these videos to then it’s hinata  
**Osamu has sent you 17 videos.** **  
** **Osamu:** are you still there i’m laughing my ass off  
**Atsumu:** please die

Atsumu is on the next available train he can find. Being a professional athlete means being able to sprint all the way to a station without breaking out in sweat while being severely hungover, but it does not prevent you from looking terrible while you’re at it.

When he knocks on Shouyou’s door in desperation, his bed hair and ugly banana patterned t-shirt he hadn’t bothered to change is the very last thing on his mind, leaving only repetitions of himself giggling like a maniac and echoing variations of “I love you” with twenty extended metaphors about the universe and tuna behind.

“Shouyou I am so, _so_ sorry for the videos” he says breathlessly. The words, apologies, confessions, explanations and everything else he had scripted in his head as he whirled here to Shouyou’s doorstep are gone, perhaps scattered across the trails of his journey.

Shouyou looks at him with tousled hair and sleep rimmed eyes, but he doesn’t interrupt. _Okay, okay, good. So he doesn’t completely hate me yet, this is a good sign._

“I’m so sorry about being so embarrassing and drunk and going on tangents about loving you and all of that, I didn’t mean what I said, or maybe I did, but that’s not important, neither is all of those things about how you’re the sun and I will gladly be the planets that revolves around you-” he pauses when he remembers he actually needs to breath. Shouyou no longer looks half asleep. He opens his mouth as if to speak, and he closes them, like a fish. This repeats several times. His brows are scrunched together, Atsumu cannot tell if it’s from confusion or disgust.

“...oh?”

_Oh, fuck it._

“Okay fine, whatever. I love you, I’ve been loving you for years. Never did anything and I’m not going to start now, so I’m sorry Samu sent you those videos and you had to see me drunk and whining about loving you at midnight at Samu’s shop. I swear it’s not going to affect how I play, and now that I’ve finally managed to get this off my chest for a solid seven years maybe I’ll finally get a life or-”

“Atsumu-san.”

“-something, like find new hobbies instead of fantasise about going on dates with you and-”

“Atsumu.”

“Yes.”

“I have never received a message from your brother in my twenty plus years of life,” he simply chirps, like Atsumu hadn’t just bared his entire heart at him.

“Oh.” _Fuck my life_ , Atsumu thinks. 

“Are you trying to confess to me?” Shouyou does not smile, but his gaze does not skirt away from Atsumu. He only looks.

“Yes … no … I… ” he trails off helplessly, feeling like a deer trapped in headlights, knowing you’re supposed to dodge to the side but still scrambling forward like you believe you can outrun a car.

“Well?”

“Yes,” his head droops. _There he’s said it. It’s all over now-_

“Nice!” Shouyou is smiling.

“Wha-”

“Atsumu, we’re officially boyfriends now.” Shouyou holds out a hand to him. “Now we shake on it.”

Atsumu stares. “What?”

“You confessed to me, I accepted,” Shouyou blinks. “Now are you going to hold my hand or will I have to make you?” 

Atsumu is thrown off by the bizarreness of it all, but he takes his hand, the one stretched out for him to shake. Do people usually shake hands after they cross the boyfriend milestone of relationships? He does not know. Perhaps he does not care.

He takes the other hand too, and holds it.

* * *

Two years is a long time.

It is a long time to hold on to a terrible, terrible confession, and tell it at every party or gathering they come across, but Shouyou does it anyway, and Atsumu doesn’t mind.

“You’ll have embarrassing stories for me to tell someday too, just you wait.” Someday. A point of time stretched out far, and you can’t see where.

Time is a social construct, it’s length shaped by context, by the company. Days and hours, seasons and decades with Hinata Shouyou feel like no time at all, but they also feel like millennia — they are nothing and everything at the same time, existing in a vacuum in spaces between gentle whispers and tender touches.

Perhaps time is simply a reef where all our frail mystic ships are wrecked. Perhaps his ship has a thousand years to sail gloriously across the horizons. Perhaps it has only one. 

Perhaps it’s fine to let it come, the years and the tides. He will take it all because he can, every bit of time with Shouyou and the gaps within.

**Author's Note:**

> This was incredibly fun to write! I hope you enjoyed it!! Title inspired by quote "Time is the reef upon which our frail mystic ships are wrecked." by Noel Coward, "Blithe Spirit". I stumbled upon it one day and went "huh, could I do something with that?"
> 
> Your thoughts or kudoes are very much appreciated, but at the end of the day, I hope this was at least somewhat enjoyable for you X)


End file.
